“Who do you suppose it is?” asked Evans.
“Don’t know,” Kelly replied testily. “But we’ll find out right soon, I reckon.”
Chapter Ten
Billy figured to ride like hell to reach San Angelo, but fate had other plans for him.
Silvery moonlight showed him the trail ahead, but even as he approached the group of rocks where Gordon Kelly and his companions had hidden, a warning shot tore the silence asunder.
“Stop!” yelled Kelly. “Don’t try anythin’ stupid! Just climb down from that there mount, and hurry up about it!”
Billy had to fight his spooked horse to a fidgety standstill, but eventually he managed it. He raised his right hand to show that he understood, then dismounted and turned to face his ambusher.
There were three of them. They all wore dusters, and two carried Winchesters.
“Lose that there gun!” snapped Kelly. “Now!”
Billy calculated the odds and didn’t like the answer he came up with. If these men were who he thought they were, he wouldn’t stand much of a chance against them. So for now he would do what they said, all the while waiting for an opening …
He slowly drew his gun from its holster and let it fall to the ground.
“What do you want from me?” he asked Kelly. “I’m in a kind of hurry. And if you’re figurin’ to rob me, I ought to warn you that I haven’t got a whole lot on me.”
Without warning Kelly moved in close and him him in the stomach with the stock of his Winchester. Billy felt a hot pain and tumbled to his knees.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Billy … ”
“Billy what?”
“Smith.”
That earned him another whack from the Winchester stock.
“Billy what?” Kelly said again.
“ … Calhoun,” Billy whispered.
“You kin to John Calhoun?”
“He’s my brother.”
“And you live out at Rancho Bravo?”
Billy nodded.
“Can I … go now?” he asked.
Ignoring him, Kelly looked at his companions. “Looks like it’s our lucky night, boys.”
“You know Sam Wilcox, boy?”
“Go to hell,” managed Billy.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Kelly, and still grinning, he slammed the stock down on Billy’s head one more time.
The last thing Billy heard before he fell into a dark hole of unconsciousness was the man’s throaty chuckle.
The pain came in waves, when Billy opened his eyes again. He felt as if his head would explode, and tears streamed down his cheeks. He heard someone groan and realized a couple of seconds later that he himself had made the sound. It took some time for his vision to clear. When he tried to wipe his hands he realized that he had been bound, and swore.
When his sight finally cleared he found himself looking into the grinning face of a stocky, muscular man.
“Gordon!” the called. “Boy’s awake again!”
The man with the greasy hair stepped into his field of view. “How you feel, boy?” he asked.
“How do you think I feel?”
“Like hell,” said Kelly. “I been cold-cocked myself a few times. Never did get to like it.”
“What’s your game? I haven’t done anythin’ to you.”
“That’s true,” Kelly agreed. “But I’m a businessman, Billy. I get a job, I get it done, any way I see fit. It’s like … what do they say? The end justifies the means.”
“And I’m the means?”
“I guess you are, at that.”
“So what’s the end?”
Kelly grinned. “We both know that, now, don’t we?”
“I don’t.”
“Then you’re a damn’ liar,” Kelly said harshly. “My name’s Gordon Kelly. But you already worked that out, I bet. Your brother would have mentioned me.”
Seeing no sense in lying about it, Billy nodded.
“Then you also know why we’re here.”
“For Wilcox?”
“For Wilcox. I assume you got him hidden away on the ranch?”
“He’s there,” said Billy. “But he ain’t hidin’. He’s waitin’ for you three.”
Kelly knelt down, grabbed the front of Billy’s shirt and drew him closer. Billy smelled his foul breath and looked away. Kelly hit him in the face and forced Billy to look at him again. “What has he told you, boy?”
“That he killed a boy called Hancock who was asking for it. That he killed Hancock in self-defense and had witnesses to stand up and swear to it. That the boy’s pa didn’t give a damn about that, all he wanted was to see Wilcox dead.”
“Did he tell you Hancock’s payin’ twenty thousand bucks for that privilege?”
“No. But that wouldn’t make any difference. Self-defense is self-defense. And what Hancock wants – murder – well, that’s just what it is – plain murder.”
Shoving Billy away, Kelly stood up and looked over his shoulder. “Jimmy – go back up into them rocks and take the watch for the next two hours. Dub, you keep an eye on our, uh, ‘guest’ here.”
“What about you?” asked Winfield.
“I’m goin’ to pay a visit on Rancho Bravo,” Kelly replied. “And if I’m not back inside three hours – kill the boy.”
Winfield, grinning, drew a large Green River knife from its sheath. He checked the sharp blade with his thumb, then put the knife away again.
“Be a pleasure,” he said softly.
The rising sun chased the last of the darkness away. Morning fog was still hanging over the high regions of the caprock plateau.
Tom Calhoun watched the new day begin. Around him, the ranch began to stir. And then Gus called for breakfast down at the bunkhouse.
“Come and get it – or I’ll throw it all away!”
Tom barely heard him. He was worried about Billy, who had still not returned from town. Tom had waited in vain for his return, and then finally sat in the chair on the front porch and focused on the direction from which Billy normally would come.
If he came.
But he didn’t. It was as if he had disappeared, and Tom Calhoun was now beginning to get distinctly nervous.
He heard steps behind him. When he turned he saw John. John saw the worry etched into his father’s gray-bearded face and shared it.
Even so, he felt compelled to say, “Billy’ll be back, pa. Could be he decided to wait for that US marshal to telegraph an answer.”
“Could be,” Tom agreed. But he couldn’t ignore the feeling he had, the certainty that something, somewhere, had gone dreadfully wrong.
“I go round up Rio,” said John. “We’ll go see if we can’t meet him comin’ back on the trail.”
“No,” Tom replied. “We’ll just set tight for a while. This Gordon Kelly character said he’d be paying us a visit today. Let’s wait for them to show up first.”
They didn’t have to wait long.
Up in the watchtower, Tully waved his rifle from side to side. He was signaling that someone was coming in.
Relief flowed through Tom. It must be Billy, at last. It had to be.
Jay Durango, who had spent a sleepless night himself, had been watching the valley from a nearby hill since sunrise. Now he left his position and quickly rode back to the yard.
“It’s only one rider, Tom,” he reported. “Comin’ in from the direction of San Angelo.”
Billy, thought Tom. It can only be the boy!
“Tully!” he called up to the cowboy in the watchtower. “Use the binoculars! Who is it?”
Gus did as the rancher had told him. The seconds stretched like elastic. Then Tully called down, “It’s not, Billy, Mr. Calhoun! It’s a stranger wearin’ a yellow duster! That’s about all I can see from here!”
Tom hands clenched. The suspicion he had that something bad must have happened to Billy suddenly became a certainty.
Chapter Eleven
The rider approached
slowly. Tom wondered if that was deliberate. At length details began to make themselves known – the duster, the horse, the easy way the man forked it.
Gordon Kelly surveyed the ranch as he came, the house, the nearby buildings and corrals, the watchtower by the well. But the big ranch didn’t impress him for a single second. He had other things on his mind, which were more important to him – and he smiled when he realized that his long search was nearly over.
Kelly passed through the big gate with the longhorn skull on top of it. They’re expecting me, he thought. And they’ve likely already figured out that I’ve got the boy. But that’s fine, ’cause it means they know I hold all the aces in this particular game.
He saw three men with guns in their hands awaiting him down at the bottom of the hill. Their faces showed angry. He recognized the young man with the black moustache. That was John Calhoun. The graybeard … well, there was such a likeness between them that he just had to be Tom Calhoun. The third man – a tall, lean fellow – he didn’t know, but something about the way he held himself implied that he was no stranger to gunplay.
He reined down before them.
John said something to his father, who aimed the Winchester in his hands directly at Kelly’s barrel chest. “You’re Kelly,” he said.
Kelly nodded. “And you’d be the big man himself,” he replied. “Head honcho hereabouts.”
“I know why you’re here, Kelly.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. It’s about a man called Sam Wilcox. A man you say murdered another man who, by everything I hear, had it coming. Wilcox acted in self-defense and was cleared by a court of law. I’m not about to see you gun him down just to satisfy someone else’s thirst for blood.”
“Is that a fact?” asked Kelly.
“It’s a fact,” said Tom. “Now turn your horse around and get the hell off my range. Show your face here again, you or your men, and I’ll have you shot for trespass.”
“Well, it seems that you and me ain’t gonna become the bosom buddies I was hopin’ for,” Kelly said sarcastically. “I know Wilcox is here. I plan to take him with me when I go.”
“Go to hell!” said John, stepping forward. “I told you people yesterday that you’d better ride clear of Rancho Bravo.”
“So you did,” said Kelly, laughing to show his contempt. “But things’ve changed since then, John Calhoun. There’s been a change in what you might call the balance of power.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” growled Jay.
“It means if you don’t give me Sam Wilcox, right here, right now, you’re gonna pay a high price indeed for it. Maybe the highest.”
Tom swallowed. He thought he knew what was coming, but he had to hear it for sure. “Maybe you’d better make yourself plain,” he husked.
Kelly chuckled some more. “All right. Let’s look at this as a trade. You give me Wilcox, and you get your baby boy back.”
“Billy!”
“Yeah – Billy. Nice boy. Make a fine man, if he gets the chance to live long enough.”
“You sonofabitch – !”
“Now, now, let’s not get to tradin’ insults. You got someone I want, I got someone you want. Hand him over and I’ll send your boy back to you, unharmed. Don’t hand him over and I’ll send Billy back dead.”
“I got a better idea,” Jay said dangerously. “You send Billy back right now and maybe, maybe, we’ll let this pass.”
“I won’t dicker about it,” said Kelly. “The deal’s simple enough. So you go fetch Wilcox out here right now! Better hurry, too. I’ve already been an hour on the trail. If I ain’t back with my friends inside two more, they got orders to slit your boy’s throat.”
Kelly settled himself more comfortably in his saddle. “Well, what’s it to be, Calhoun?”
A voice behind him said, “That’s a decision I’ll make.”
Kelly hipped around. A man was standing behind him and his right hand hovered dangerously close to the gun on his hip.
It was Sam Wilcox himself.
Wilcox came closer, one inexorable step after another, and there was something flat and dead in his eyes, a knowledge that there would be more killing before long, and he would be responsible for it, just as he had been responsible for so many deaths in the past. Much as he hated to admit it, Kelly found the sight unnerving.
“Unbuckle that belt, Wilcox,” he said, “lessen you want that boy to die on your account.”
“Come on, Kelly,” Wilcox replied. “Takin’ an innocent boy hostage … tryin’ to shoot me from ambush … you’re a yellow sonofabitch! But you got a chance to stand up to me right now, man to man … if you’ve got the sand.”
“I’m not here to fight you,” Kelly bluffed. “I’m here to take you in. What happens after that is Matt Hancock’s affair.”
Wilcox looked at Tom. Tom’s eyes sent out a message that said, Please, don’t do anything that’ll get my boy killed. With effort he flexed his gunhand and moved it away from his Colt.
“You go back where you came from,” he said. “I’ll be there inside two hours.”
Kelly found within him another chuckle, now that the threat of violence had passed. “And I’m supposed to trust you to keep your word?”
“If I don’t show up, kill the boy,” Wilcox replied casually. “Calhoun here won’t let me ride out. He’ll kill me first. Right, Mr. Calhoun?”
“Damn right,” muttered Tom.
“So there’s your guarantee. I turn up alive, under my own steam, or Calhoun brings me to you folded across a horse, dead as stone. Either way, you get what you want, and Calhoun gets to fetch his boy back home, unharmed.”
Kelly hesitated. “Why don’t I just take you with me, right now?”
Wilcox looked away. “See all this?” he countered. “The sun, the hills, the grass, this good, clean air? I know what’s up ahead of me, Kelly, and it’s just a pine box covered with six feet of dirt. You put yourself in my boots. Wouldn’t you want to make the most of all this before it was taken away from you?”
Kelly had never really considered his own mortality, and felt uncomfortable considering it now. All the things a man took for granted every day, suddenly wrenched away from him. The dying might be easy, but being deprived of everything he loved … that was hard indeed.
“All right,” he said. “But you got two hours, not a second more.”
“Fair enough,” Wilcox said, his voice mirroring the heavy defeat he seemed to be feeling. “Where do I come?”
“The same spot we tried to take you a couple days before. Them rocks you scuttled into and vanished among.”
“The same spot Billy found me,” Wilcox nodded. “I’ll be there.”
“And no tricks,” Kelly warned. “And that goes for you, too, Calhoun. This isn’t your business.”
“You’ve made it my business,” said Tom.
“No tricks,” Kelly repeated. “When we’ve got Wilcox where we want him, when we’re well on the way out of this county … then we’ll send your boy back to you, Calhoun. You got my word on that.”
Tom didn’t think much of that as a guarantee, but he said nothing.
Kelly chuckled again, then turned his mount and rode out at a gallop.
“You know you’re going to your death,” said Tom.
Wilcox had saddled his horse and was ready to take the animal out of the corral. Shortly after Gordon Kelly had left the ranch, he’d gone back into the house to pack his belongings. Tom, John and Jay had waited silently in the living room. A few minutes later they heard Wilcox coming downstairs. He stopped in the doorway, looked at each of them, said, “I’m sorry things worked out the way they did, Mr. Calhoun. But I’ll do the best I can to set them all right again.”
“We all will,” said Tom. “I know the spot they want you to go to. Me and some of the boys can get there ahead of you and circle the place, creep up and take ’em by surprise.”
“You could try,” said Wilcox. “But what if they see you comin
’? You think they’ll spare Billy then?” He shook his head. “No – I won’t take that risk, and I don’t think you will, either. Not if you want to make sure you get Billy back safe and sound.”
Wilcox went and got his horse. Tom followed him over there, not knowing what to say, not wanting to say goodbye because he knew the goodbye would be permanent.
Wilcox settled the matter for him. “Just keep out of it, Mr. Calhoun. If not for my sake, then for Billy’s. I’ve taken enough life in my time. Now I aim to give it back – to your son.”
Tom wanted to tell him he couldn’t possibly hope to survive the coming encounter. Three against one … they were odds even someone like Sam Wilcox couldn’t buck. But he held his peace.
“I’m tired, Calhoun,” said Wilcox, and he sounded it. “Tired of always being on the move, of having nothing to look forward to save the next gun-job. I’m tired of spending Christmases alone, of not having a woman or kids or friends or a place of my own. I’m tired of being me.”
“You can change all that,” said Tom.
“I don’t think I can,” Wilcox replied. “I don’t think fate’ll ever let me.”
Tom swallowed heavily. “Well, you’re wrong about one thing,” he said.
“Oh?”
“That part about not having any friends.”
He shoved out his hand and they shook. Then he mounted up and walked his horse out of the corral.
“Don’t you follow me, Calhoun”, he warned. “Let me handle this job my way. You do that, you’ll have Billy back by this evening.”
“And you?” asked Tom.
Wilcox made no reply, just set his heels to his horse and rode away.
The nearer he came to his rocky destination, the closer he scanned the terrain ahead. Somewhere up in that wilderness of jagged rocks and dead trees, he would find the men who had abducted Billy. He could only hope that they hadn’t treated the youngster too badly. And if they had – then Wilcox swore that they would pay for it.
He directed his horse toward some thorn bush and reined it. Dismounting, he tied his reins to a branch. He opened one of the packs he had brought with him, smiled when he looked at the leathery chaps. He buckled them on quickly, as protection from the sharp thorns of this thicket country. Next came a leather jacket and gloves. Finally he draped his horse with a thick woolen blanket so as to help it avoid any painful wounds. He stroked the horse’s neck and spoke a few soothing words to the animal. Then he checked his weapons before remounting and continued on his way.
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